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Judged by the evidence of their crew cuts, bling jewellery, hoodies, incessant yaddering into expensive mobile phones, lack of obvious employment and sheer bad driving, you might imagine that the casual mention of Top Gear to a certain type of BMW M3 driver would result in a small packet of Columbian marching powder rather than a discussion about sitting down in front of JC, James and the Hamster on Sunday evening. A suspicious number of M3 drivers have, as Elmore Leonard might put it, a whiff of being "in the life".

But as Telegraph Motoring contributor Mark Hales once told me, you shouldn't test a car's owners. No matter what the image of the machine, you have to bring your objective judgment to what it is, rather than who buys it. To me this seems a bit like testing a 1930s Mercedes 770 Grosser and not mentioning Adolf Hitler, or analysing Chelsea Football Club without a whisper of Roman Abramovich. Besides, it would make a very short road test. Bigger, better, stronger, longer and nine grand more expensive would sum up BMW's new M3 quite nicely. Will that do?

Of course it won't, because far from its understated M-sport cars of old, BMW has its own agenda with the new M3, to the extent that it has bigged-up the car into some sort of mythical beast. First there was the Geneva show M3 concept car that was nothing of the sort; then, when the launch invitation finally arrived, you could almost hear the roll of drums as the envelope was torn open. "Places on this launch are scarce," intoned the blurb, along with dire threats of economy-class flights for those replying late. British terrorism put no one off and the front seats of the 8.15am A321 Airbus from Gatwick to Malaga were packed with the hardest, the fastest and the most gimlet-eyed wheelmen the British motoring press can muster. Oh, and I was there, too.

This is the fourth-generation M3 and its specification is heavily influenced by racing and road competition. On the track, M3s have successfully replaced straight-six with V8 power for some years. On the road, thanks to four-wheel drive, the V8 Audi RS4 has been able to drive straight on to BMW's lawn and park there. There's something of a German power race going on and BMW has been left in the cold recently thanks to the adoption of V8 engines in the AMG Mercedes C-class and the Audi A4.

As always with BMW, the press briefing started with the engine and a litany of uncensored hardcore techno-porn. The new M3's powerplant is four fifths of the awesome 90-degree V10 in the M5 model, which was built to emulate the BMW engine that powered Williams Formula One cars between 2000 and 2005. In fact, the M3's engine block is cast in the same plant, at Landshut near Munich, that makes the blocks for BMW's current V8 F1 engines. Its chain-driven double overhead camshafts per bank have double Vanos variable valve timing and four valves per cylinder. Eight Mahle iron-coated racing pistons run direct in high-silicone-content aluminium-alloy bores and are sprayed with cooling oil at the bottom of each stroke. The Carillo-type con-rods are deliberately cracked open across the main bearing web, then bolted back together around the forged crankshaft so the mating surfaces are infinite and almost self locking, resisting movement in all but one plane. Racing technology is used for the eight individual throttle butterflies to increase the responsiveness of the throttle pedal. The twin engine-oil pumps have a variable capacity depending on the physical loads on the car and the engine's oil pressure; this prevents oil starvation in cornering and braking and also dispenses with the clumsy blow-off relief valve and reduces frictional losses. Feed-forward ignition-coil voltage is used to sample the conductivity of the partially ionised flame front of the burning air/fuel mixture. This is done via the spark-plug electrodes in each cylinder on every firing stroke and the timing is adjusted accordingly to ensure that maximum power is extracted from every drop of fuel… Sated yet? The result is a short-stroke four-litre V8 that delivers 414bhp at 8,300rpm and 295lb ft at 3,900rpm. Er, like wow, Scoobs.

How fast? Like all German manufacturers, BMW limits its top speed to 155mph and the M3 will fly from rest to 62mph in 4.8 seconds. The EU Urban fuel consumption is a belt-tightening 15.8mpg, although several journalists on the launch averaged less than 11mpg. With a 13.9-gallon fuel tank, this would give the BMW a workable range of about 150 miles, so M3 owners will have to learn to love free gifts from petrol companies. In fact, this is a common trait with this rarefied breed; two Audi RS4 owners of my acquaintance say they average about 12mpg in everyday use.

From the far distance, the M3 is handsome and purposeful and, if not pretty, at least eye catching. Get closer and those impressions start to wither under an onslaught of ornament. There's not a flash or a furbelow, a piece of frippery or flim-flam that hasn't been tried on this car, from the chromium-plated wing vents to the bare carbon-fibre-reinforced plastic roof, which heats the cabin up to Regulo 7 on a sunny day. Some of this works (just) but some, like the view of the bronze-stained four-pipe silencer box under the rear bumper, doesn't. The car is untypical of M-sport's traditional understatement and makes the Audi RS4 look very grown up.

M-sport's head designer, Karl Elmitt, admits: "We couldn't build cars as brutal as the old M3s today." But then he adds, contrarily: "You need to remember that the M department is a heavy-duty engineering organisation and design is subservient to that." As for the carbon-fibre roof, he says paint would sink around the carbon weave and that's why it's not an option in the UK, although it is in Germany.

In the cabin it's the same story: from the eight different surface changes in the door panels alone to the carbon-fibre-look leather on the dashboard and the clumsily thick steering wheel, it's a bit excessive. The seats are an exception, being superbly supportive and comfortable without recourse to the ludicrous dirigible qualities of the AMG Mercedes equivalent.

You wouldn't buy an M3 for its practical qualities (would you?) but the rear seats are reasonably comfortable, if cramped, and the boot will hold a couple of medium-sized suitcases, although the wheelarches do intrude from the sides. Air-conditioning, a simple brake-energy regeneration system, park-distance control, automatic rain sensor and headlamp activation, BMW's ludicrously named "Professional" sat-nav system and the hated iDrive rotary control are standard fittings.

Press the starter and the M3 fires almost immediately, the engine clanking against its transmission like a locomotive and audibly moving large amounts of air around. BMW calls this engine a "high-speed" V8 and the throttle response is immediate and strong, the rev counter needle flipping up and down behind its glass. Considering the amount of torque it has to handle, the M3's gearchange is better than most, but it still feels heavy and industrial and is inclined to spit the lever out of the gate if you don't engage second gear correctly.

"Torque isn't everything," muttered a German journalist darkly, but a study of the precession of the equinoxes tells us that torque never rests and even at low speeds the M3 has more than enough low-down grunt to illuminate the dashboard with warning lights. On slippery Spanish roads the M3 didn't need any encouragement to spin its wheels, even on small throttle openings. Just pulling out of the Marbella hotel car park was an exercise in moderation.

Out on the open road, extending the engine reveals more of its extraordinary power. Accompanied by a guttural, high-tech roar, it pitches 1.7 tons of man and machine up the road with alacrity. On a public road you would never be short of acceleration, or top speed. Via a series of switches and the iDrive, you can adjust the response of the engine to the throttle and switch to a special M-Drive programme that customises your preferences.

The brakes, a notorious weak spot of previous M3s, seem valiant on the road, never fading or smoking after repeated hard use. BMW had fitted semi-racing pads, though, and they squealed and grabbed the discs abruptly. On single standing-start laps of the Ascari Ring, a vanity racetrack in southern Spain, the M3's anchors were equally strong, but on repeated laps without those racing pads, who knows?

The ride is better than it has a right to be on public roads and in sixth gear the M3 is a tolerable, if short-range, cruiser; you have the choice of electrically stiffening the damping until your eyeballs rattle in their sockets. The handling is flat and with the lighter V8 engine, the new M3 likes to change direction more than its predecessor did. It has a restless quality, however, and at times that willingness to turn can become a liability. At one point, I braked before a corner and the front wheels tried to lock up and set off the ABS, so I changed into second gear and the rears tried to lock; I turned in and the fronts slid wide, then the whole car started to drift sideways, then the rear wheels slid wide. OK, the roads were very slippery, but it was the way the M3 let go that was worrying. It never gave the first indication that it was going to slide, unlike the Jaguar XKR, for example, which in similar circumstances will telegraph its intentions with every move. Of course there are electronic devices to keep the M3 on the road, but you rely rather heavily on them at times.

On the Ascari circuit I was driven round by Gerhard Richter, vice-president of BMW's M-cars division. Interesting man, Richter: charming, with a beard trimmed neater than an Oxfordshire hedgerow, a fag every half hour and brutally quick behind the wheel, reputedly faster than ex-F1 star Gerhard Berger around the Nürburgring's Nordschleife. He whammed the M3 round the track, talking about how he will miss the old straight-six engine, but adding that the V8 was necessary. I just sat there with eyes like saucers, gripping the door pull like it was the emergency exit from hell.

I've got a theory that the driving style of a company's chief tester tends to influence the way the road cars handle. At Jaguar, chief test driver Mike Cross travels almost imperceptibly quickly. Richter, while not a test driver, comes from another school and relies more heavily on his undoubted skills rather than what the car is telling him. Interestingly, he left every stability control switched on for his hot lap. If you start to turn things off in this car you'd better be absolutely sure you know what you're doing, and even then you should think twice - carefully.

Perhaps all this is a way of saying I'm not good enough fully to exploit the handling of the new M3, but this is nevertheless a heavy-duty car with a lot of performance and not a lot of feedback to the driver. What feedback you do get tells you that if you use its performance, it feels horribly almost out of control for quite a lot of the time. I don't mind admitting it frightened me a bit; perhaps I'm not a BMW type. For those who are, this is a strange manifestation of Bavarian surety, a red, purple and blue tunnel down which a sporting driver must travel to emerge at the end as the ultimate driver of the ultimate driving machine. They take these things seriously in Germany.

So, in the vernacular well known to the stereotypical M3 driver: choose regenerative braking, choose a variable M Differential, choose 420bhp at 8,300rpm, choose an optional BMW Individual High End Audio system. Choose the M3. Or choose life in something less scary. It's up to you.

BMW M3 [tech/spec]

Price/availability: £50,625. On sale September 8 with a waiting list of about 12 months.